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Category: Philosophy

  • William Lane Craig — 

    Hello Dr. Craig. My question was awakened after having been listening to your class on ''The Ontological Argument''. My question to you is: Does a maximally great being, necessarily have be what we humans are able to imagine as the greatest being? Can it not just be that the being (God) who is in reality the greatest of all beings (since no greater being exists in reality), is the greatest conceivable being. Why do our imagining of a greater being need to devaluate the greatness of the already greatest being. Even if we could imagine a greater being, can it not just be that those ''greater/higher attributes'' are unnecessary and therefore not really greater attributes?

  • William Lane Craig — 

    Dear Dr. Craig, First off, I want to thank you for all that you have done for me through your ministry and hope that your reach continues to spread. I grew up in a conservative Christian home and for the most part accepted everything that I had been taught. Then during my junior year of high school I read some Richard Dawkins, and the likes, and quickly lost my faith. About six or so months later I discovered your ministry and my life was changed! Your arguments convinced me and in no time I had gone back to my faith. I read On Guard and Reasonable Faith among other Christian authors as well. I felt that my faith was strong and I even considered changing my major to Philosophy for a short time. But now, I am saddened to say that I am slowly losing my faith in the Christian God ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    Dear Dr. Craig, I recently viewed your defense of the Kalam Cosmological Argument video at the Baylor University Alvin Plantinga conference, and I was intrigued by the new grim reaper argument against an infinite series of causal events. I've searched throughout the web and have found very little on this argument. I was wondering what exactly your thoughts were on this argument and if you will be adding it to your repertoire of arguments against an eternal series of causal events ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    Hello Dr. Craig, I have always wondered about your claim that Christianity is the only true religion (based on historical evidence as you say). But how can you be so sure when Islamic and Jewish scholars claim the same claim? As a former atheist and now an agnostic, the question of which religion to choose is essential. I'm very well acquainted with Islamic Theology and unlike your claim. Islam affirms that Christians, Jews and Muslims worship the same god ("Allah" is not a special god for Muslims rather it's the term for god in Arabic). So what is your position on Islam? (And I would really like to know from who do you get your information on Islamic theology). I also would to invest some time in Christian theology, would kindly recommend some introductory books?

  • William Lane Craig — 

    Hi Dr. Craig, Let me first say that while not a Christian myself (although I've somehow ended up doing a theology degree...) I am a very big fan of your program of presenting rigorous and rational justification for Christian doctrine - in particular you have thoroughly convinced me on the cosmological argument! However I am unwilling to move beyond belief in a minimalist Deist creator God for several reasons, among which is the question of: Is the incarnation compatible with theodicy? ...

  • Scott Rae — 

    In his 2012 book, Mind and Cosmos, philosopher Thomas Nagel, who is both an atheist and a philosophical naturalist (the view that all reality can be reduced to the material world alone) issues a stark conclusion (some would call it a terminal diagnosis) for naturalism due to its inability to account for some key aspects of human experience that many believe make human beings significant—namely, consciousness, rationality, and morality/moral properties ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    Hi Dr. Craig! I consider myself to be a Christian layman, as I am not formally trained in philosophy (I am a computer science major). However, I have been reading content on your website for about three months now and have read Reasonable Faith, On Guard, Contending With Christianity's Critics, Is God a Moral Monster, and I am currently working through Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    Dr. Craig, Firstly, thank you for all that you do for the Kingdom. Your work has been a great encouragement to me since I came to faith in Christ a few years ago. Recently, in the March issue of the popular philosophy journal 'Think', Raphael Lataster attacks your argument from Jesus' resurrection as circular. The article is titled: "A PHILOSOPHICAL AND HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF WILLIAM LANE CRAIG'S RESURRECTION OF JESUS ARGUMENT" ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    Dr. Craig, I have a question about Alvin Platinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. He argues, I think, that the probability that my cognitive factulties are reliable (R) given that naturalism and evolution (N&E) are true, is low or inscrutable. And that, furthermore, if I accept that P(R/N&E) is low or inscrutable, then I have a defeater for any belief produced by my faculties, including N&E ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    Hello Dr. Craig, ... I am a student of philosophy looking to go into apologetics ministry. In my studies and my time witnessing I've had to address many of the common objections to Christianity. One of the more recent objections has come from a Jewish man that I am witnessing to. It seems that one of the crucial things that is holding him back is the worship of Jesus. He couldn't see any way how this wouldn't end up being idolatry because, as he claimed, “you would be worshiping man rather than God”. Of course, I tried to point out that Jesus has two natures but it seems like this point was missed. Do you have any helpful ways to explain our worship of Jesus in a way that bypasses this objection? How should we understand our worship of Jesus? Do we worship him in deity and merely admire his humanity? ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    Dear, Dr. Craig, As one who has recently discovered the realm of apologetics in the past couple years, you were one of the first I had come to know, and it has been a pleasure reading some of your material and watching your debates. I am currently only a junior in college and am studying philosophy and religious studies and love it, and hope to attend seminary in the future and get my masters in apologetics, God willing. My question for you is not necessarily a theological or philosophical question but a question that I am hoping I could get some pastoral advice from you about that I feel you are perhaps the best suited to answer. I recently got married this past summer to an amazing woman I met at a one year bible college I attended a couple years ago and it has been great. But between transferring to a new (secular) school and being constantly busy with school and work I feel like my relationship with God is constantly on the backburner, as I am not getting into the word nearly as much as I used to and my prayer life is nearly nonexistent, and because of this my relationship with my wife is not where it should be either ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    Dear Dr. William Lane Craig, ... My question is about the model of the Incarnation you and J.P. Moreland present in Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, which states that many of the divine attributes of Jesus were located in his subconsciousness. I'm having a problem with this. Maximal greatness would seem to me to imply having access to any and all knowledge on the spot, which would in turn seem to imply that God would have omniscience in His consciousness, where all the knowledge can be directly accessed. Can you please clear this up for me?

  • William Lane Craig — 

    Dear Dr. Craig, ... My question is regarding one of the latest news. I am an Indonesian living in Surabaya and the QZ8501 accident has had a huge impact on me. But most of all it was a great shock for a friend of mine. She is a Christian attending Mawar Sharon church with her parents. They were such wonderful persons, as well as a good Christian. But then they were traveling on QZ8501, while my friend stayed at home. You know the rest of the story ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    Dear Dr Craig, I have recently moved on from Christianity to agnosticism, but I regularly check out your Q and A section as much of the content there is more sensible and thought provoking than the kind of thing I hear from a lot of Evangelicals ... Currently it seems to me that the idea of prayer is most sensibly explained as an addictive placebo that gives people a greater sense of control over their circumstances than they actually have. But just maybe there's something crucial I've missed, and if so I would be grateful if you could point out what that might be ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    "... I am now stuck in a nihilistic-atheistic world that I hate. Agnosticism is not even a coherent position to me, with regards to a Perfect Being, since I believe that the greatest conceivable being could give me knowledge of its existence, if it wanted to. Theism is a dream come true. The world would make sense, the existential mysteries that haunt me would be solved, life would be livable. It is atheism, however, which seems to be true, yet I do not want to live like this. I have become depressed to no end. I have been in a nihilistic rut for years now. I have become utterly recluse. Yet, even with all this, I cannot come to believe in God. What would YOU suggest I do? ..."

  • Scott Rae — 

    We are moving in our culture toward a view of morality that renders moral values and virtues as no more than simply matters of opinion with no force or application beyond the individual who holds such a view. The contrasts sharply with the notion of morality from a Christian worldview that insists that moral assessments are not only objective but also matters of truth and knowledge. As we celebrated MLK day a couple weeks ago, we should be reminded that King himself held that the moral values on which the civil rights movement was based, were objective and knowable by the average person in the streets. He held that they were objective truths of morality, not subjective matters of individual preference ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig. Recently I listened to your argument from the applicability of mathematics on premier Christian radio as well as the debate you had with Alex Rosenberg. I'm not particularly knowledgeable when it comes to mathematics but I was intrigued by your comments on how the argument from the applicability of mathematics is similar to the argument from fine tuning ... Could it be that, as with the fine tuning argument, the applicability of mathematics might be explained by necessity? ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig. Dr. Craig, I recently listened to your Podcast from the Defenders class on God's concurrence (Defenders 2, Doctrine of Creation: Part 8). At the outset, you explained that God is the cause of everything because he concurs in it. As an attorney, this made an abundant amount of sense to me. In the law (particularly in tort), an omission (or failure to act) can be the cause of something in the same way that an affirmative act can. Of course, we would only impose liability where the omission is accompanied by some legal duty to act, but that inquiry is wholly separate from the causation inquiry ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig: ... my question today refers to Lee Strobel book "The Case for a Creator". There was one part in the book where Strobel asked you "why does it have to be One Creator?" And you responded by saying "my opinion, Ockham's Razor would shave away any additional Creators." So my question today is in 3 questions: Define what is Ockham's Razor? How does this (scientific) principle or theory eliminate the need for extra gods? How does Ockham's Razor prove the existence of One God? ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig: ... I have a few questions for you which I am hoping you can answer to help strengthen my arguments for Christianity. I have a friend who is a Panentheist; she believes that God literally is the universe and exists apart from the universe at the same time. She claims that God is eternal and there is no reason to believe that the universe began. She also believes that God can be both material and immaterial at the same time and she uses Christ as an example for this point. Finally, she believes that God is not a cause apart from nature, but literally is the force of nature (e.g. Genesis 1 - Elohim "becoming" light and so forth, teachings of Hasidic Judaism, Isaiah 6:3, Gods omniscience, being in all places at once); therefore she also believes that God does not hand down judgment to humanity but instead warns us of the inevitable results due to particular actions (e.g. Genesis 4) ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig. Hello Dr. Craig I'm writing from Sweden so I hope you can understand the meaning of my questions even if it is not in perfectly good english. I should start by saying that I am a non-Christian ... Some months ago I started thinking about life, in a way that I had not done before. I started asking myself the big questions. What is the meaning of my life? What is the reason we are here? What makes me important? Sadly I couldn't find the answers to these questions and the more I thought about them, the harder it became to live my day to day life ... Is the only reason to live life as a Christian to tell others about God? Is that the meaning of life? And finally, why why why should people who believe in God but lives here on earth under terrible circumstances (poverty, depression, sickness, war) still continue there lives here? Wouldn't it be better to just die and go to heaven?

  • William Lane Craig — 

    This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig. Dear, Dr. Craig, My daughter died a little over a month ago. She would of been three January 18th.I loved her more then anything. She was born with a rare neurological disease. My question is... How could an all loving God, who loves his children and who has such great "power" would allow this to happen. How come everything that happens good to a believer confirms faith and the bad is considered a test or a cliquiest " God is mysterious" explanation. If he is so great and so good, then why he take my daughter from me?! ...

  • William Lane Craig — 

    This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig. "... You might say that there are objective moral values and they need to be followed regardless of the fact that they do affect our salvation or not. Bible and Jesus also teach us to do good deeds. I agree with these assertions but the question still lingers for a person like me and many others (people who are primarily concerned with the bottom line result) that why do we have to take moral commandments/values so seriously when ultimately they are not going to count in our 'scoring sheet' in the hereafter. Of course there are objective moral values and Bible & Jesus Christ teach us to be good human beings. But Bible/Jesus Christ teach us lot of good things and no Christian can claim to fully adhere to these teachings. This is what evangelical Christianity teaches us that whatever good we do, we cannot merit God's salvation which is an unmerited gift and comes with faith alone ..."

  • William Lane Craig — 

    This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig: I'm taking a philosophy class at a local community collage. I wrote a paper on the fine-tuning argument presented by Robin Collins. The fine tuning is improbable given atheism. Here we have all of the number for fine tuning for life given by Collins. But my professor raised an objection that I have never heard before, namely what is the probability of God? His objection is that if have a probability for the fine tuning we need a probability to compare it to. Since we don't have a clear one, why should we conclude that God is more likely than atheistic fine tuning? If you could help me understand this I would greatly appreciate it. I can understand that it seems like a very reasonable thing to think God is not as unlikely as the fine tuning but is there a strong philosophical argument or case to be made here?

  • William Lane Craig — 

    This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig: While taking an anthropology course at San Jose State University about 10 years ago, the instructor took a poll on the first day of class asking students if that we were there because: 1) God created the world that we know including humans in their present form. 2) God guiding evolution to present times. 3) Evolution without God via chance and natural selection. The instructor ended the survey by saying that by the end of the course he would convince the class that #3 is, in fact, the truth. One of the examples that he used was the argument involving vestigial limbs and body parts. He pointed to humans resembling tadpoles with tails in the embryo state, whales with hip joints, dogs with toes high on their legs that are useless, genetic trail showing that a horse's hoof is really the middle toe that continued to grow longer than the others, etc. I would love to hear Dr. Craig's answer to such evidence. I have been strengthened by your ministry and I will continue to support it. Please feel free to paraphrase my question to correct any grammatical errors.